Why UTOK is an “Endo-Natural” Worldview
What do you think of parapsychological phenomena? What about life after death? What about the idea that there is a federation of aliens who are coordinating to keep us from using nukes to kill ourselves? Or the idea that we are living in some great computer simulation? Or the idea that the universe is a singular “Big Mind”?
I have had interesting conversations with folks who “truly believe” each of these things. I myself have had some experiences that would point to the possibility of parapsychological phenomena. I have also been intrigued by the many remarkable Near-Death Experiences reported and by the experiences of folks who have encountered UFO/UAPs. And I have had a productive conversation with the analytical ideal philosopher, Bernardo Kastrup, who argues that the universe is, at bottom, mental in nature.
What do these phenomena have to do with UTOK, the Unified Theory of Knowledge? My general stance to all of the above is (a) openness, skepticism, and agnosticism; and (b) to emphasize that UTOK is an “endo-natural” perspective and worldview. My goal in this blog is to be clear about what I mean by “endo-naturalism,” and why I think it is an important and useful frame to use for UTOK.
First, let’s start with naturalism. Although naturalism can mean many different things, at the most general level it refers to the idea that there is only “one world,” which is the natural world, and there are no “supernatural” forces, worlds, or entities. With this framing, we can say that UTOK is “monist” in the sense that is posits that there is only one world.
UTOK maps the natural world with the Tree of Knowledge System and the Periodic Table of Behavior. In so doing, a second meaning of the world natural emerges, which is that we can differentiate the natural world from the world of human-engineered technology. Neither cups nor roads are classified by the Periodic Table of Behaviors in nature. The reason is that the ToK System and PTB map the process of complexification across the scales of nature. Of course, things like cups and roads are of this “one world,” and thus are natural in the first sense of the world. However, if we are going to effectively map behaviors in the world, it is important differentiate behaviors in the natural world from the technological world.
The third meaning of the word natural pertains to natural science. One of UTOK’s core projects is to coherently relate and connect the science of psychology to the natural sciences. Indeed, the word “unified” in UTOK is equivalent to and is directly aligned with E. O. Wilson’s concept of “consilience,” which refers to a coherent system of knowledge that includes the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. UTOK purports to achieve Wilson’s dream of consilience, and UTOK is consilient with the natural sciences in a way that also allows us to be clear about how we can achieve the proper frame for the social sciences and humanities.
The fourth meaning of the word naturalism in the context of UTOK is to contrast it with materialism. This may be surprising because many see the two as similar. However, materialism here refers to the old idea that stemmed from classical physics that posited that the world was, at bottom, a reductive, mechanical system of cause and effect which can be called “naïve Newtonianism”. Naïve Newtonianism should have been put to rest many decades ago, but, unfortunately, it still is around (see, e.g., Robert Sapolsky's recent book, Determined, here for a critique).
UTOK is grounded in a universal, natural behaviorism that clarifies the major ontological levels that start with an Energy Information Implicate Order and from there move to the plane of inanimate material objects into the plane of living organisms into the plane of minded animals and then cultured persons. It frames the universe as an unfolding wave of emergent, evolving/emanating, energy information that is behaving at different planes of existence because of different information processing systems and communication networks. As this blog on the error that both Ken Wilber and John Watson make, it is important to differentiate UTOK’s behaviorism from materialism. UTOK is anchored to a Big History behavioral view, not a reductive materialist view of the world.
With these descriptions for framing UTOK’s version of naturalism, we can move to the prefix “endo.” I developed this description and realized its utility following a conversation that I had with the “meta-integral” theorist, Dr. Sean Esbjörn-Hargens. Sean has developed the field of “Exo-Studies,” which is described as:
the meta-disciplinary study of all the anomalous phenomena that lie outside our current models of explanation and views of reality. The existence of UFOs and their occupants is arguably the most heavily researched and well documented of all anomalous phenomena. Thus, UFOs serve as a focal point within exo studies to develop a postpositivist scientific approach that can be used to investigate and make sense of a wide range of other anomalous and paranormal (i.e., “exo”) realities.
I am both fascinated and agnostic regarding the phenomena Sean dives into with his work on Exo-Studies. And I found significant value in his frame because I could contrast it to the focus of UTOK.
UTOK is about getting an accurate, coherent descriptive metaphysical system for this world, the natural world, that is examined in a reliable and valid way by science and our everyday, observable experiences. UTOK makes explicit that we currently lack a coherent, naturalistic, scientific worldview that can effectively place our personal experiences within it. The Enlightenment Gap and the problem of psychology make it clear that we do not have a coherent naturalistic worldview that is up to the task.
Of course, UTOK says that such a worldview is possible. With UTOK, we can solve the problem of psychology and resolve the Enlightenment Gap and transform our basic worldview from a confusing split between matter and mind into a coherent picture of a behavioral, complexifying wave of energy, matter, life, mind, and culture that is viewed subjectively with the iQuad Coin, objectively with the Tree of Knowledge System, and intersubjectively with the UTOK Garden.
UTOK is concerned with getting the natural into social science into subjective psyche picture of the (endo-)natural world correct. The division between endo- versus exo- allows UTOK to not get bogged down into potentially distracting debates about the world outside the natural world. By making this division, we can simply state that if you are interested in the confederation of aliens or in life after death or the higher dimensions that result in parapsychological phenomena, you can go explore Exo-studies with Sean or other similar endeavors that are concerned with such entities. And if you are interested in a second Enlightenment that scientifically and philosophically gets the right relationship in the natural world between matter and mind and subjective and scientific knowing, then come join the UTOK Community.
